I've just had a quick look through Susan Hall's twitter likes and I'm not sure she's a good fit for London Mayor. 😬
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
She's not, but it's really hard to think who could actually do better for the Conservatives.
The stench of death. I'm not sure she'd even be palatable in the Shires, let alone London.
This is very much a core vote action.
How do we think this will play out in the actual election?
I've got as far as evaluating the three potential Conservative candidates as Tweedledum, Tweedledummer, and Tweedledumkopf, all being as mad as hatters.
Suze Hall, with a number of years in the London Assembly, has repeatedly asserted she will do things which are outside the powers of the Mayors of London, so are we to expect a revolution lead by Brian Coleman and the Barnet Massive invading Mornington Crescent Tube Station?
The Tories will not get decent candidates while they give the vote to Tory members
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
.
@Cyclefree I am usually sympathetic to your points but this goes way too far. Of course prostitution can be a form of rape if the woman is not truly consenting because she has been trafficked, or is dependent on a drug supply or scared of her pimp.
But prostitution per se is not rape. Many prostitutes enter into transactions freely and because they want money for whatever purpose. You can argue about the morality of that, the desirability or otherwise of using the criminal law to try and discourage that but you cannot say that is rape.
But, given the current somewhat ambiguous state of our current law and the risks of corruption and extortion arising I do agree that serving police officers should not be paying for sex.
Read this thread and then tell me that those women are truly freely consenting to sex. Women who are desperate are not free. They are selling their bodies because they have to. That is not consent freely given in any meaningful sense of the word. We have made coercive control a criminal offence but don't want to consider that pimps managing prostitutes is also a form of coercive control.
I believe some of you were interested in the deadline for voluntary NI contributions. The deadline has been extended to 31 July 2023. You have twelve days left.
My wife has tried to explore this but simply cannot get into the HMRC site. She has given them the requisite information but it won't let her in. Trying to find assistance on this has proven impossible to date. If anyone has an idea of how to get someone, anyone, from HMRC respond or assist I would be grateful if you would share it.
I had some difficulty with their 'site on a different matter. Using a different browser on a different computer appeared to 'fix' the issue. I was so grateful I was finally in that I didn't investigate what was going on.
I've just had a quick look through Susan Hall's twitter likes and I'm not sure she's a good fit for London Mayor. 😬
What is happening to the Tories? This is desperate stuff.
She's not, but it's really hard to think who could actually do better for the Conservatives.
The stench of death. I'm not sure she'd even be palatable in the Shires, let alone London.
This is very much a core vote action.
How do we think this will play out in the actual election?
I've got as far as evaluating the three potential Conservative candidates as Tweedledum, Tweedledummer, and Tweedledumkopf, all being as mad as hatters.
Suze Hall, with a number of years in the London Assembly, has repeatedly asserted she will do things which are outside the powers of the Mayors of London, so are we to expect a revolution lead by Brian Coleman and the Barnet Massive invading Mornington Crescent Tube Station?
The Tories will not get decent candidates while they give the vote to Tory members
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
What is the Met's new slogan? "Abstain or rape" would have obvious drawbacks. Are there any other perfectly legal activities the Met should ban? Scrapping their old cars, for instance, as scrap metal was often a front for armed robbers, or having their hair cut, since barbers might be a front for money-laundering?
My guess is this policy will be welcomed only by those who want prostitution outlawed anyway.
Indeed. Awkward subject, but there are still many who have an illiberal belief that any kind of sex that is outside their particular morality or point of reference should be legally restricted (see the recent bruhaha over Schofield and Edwards which was really about homophobia). There are obviously huge criminality aspects to prostitution which cause concern. There are those like Cyclefree who will refer to it as "men thinking they can buy women" which is a moral position rather than a rational one because there is a quite large number of men who offer themselves for sex and the titillation (stripping etc.) of both men and women. I suspect that those who are not coerced into it by criminals see it as a way of earning money and their right to do so, and it is not the state's place to judge them or criminalise them. Their right to sell their services (and their bodies if you want to see it that way) as they see fit, and do not want their clients to be criminalised either. That is the liberal position.
The ban is on police officers not just on male ones. So it applies to female police officers buying sex.
The issue is not whether prostitution is legal or not. But the fact that police officers who become punters are placing themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or an appearance of one. That is incompatible with policing without fear or favour, with good policing and also puts them at risk of blackmail. Quite why people do not see this beats me.
As for the argument that if you don't let police officers have sex with trafficked women who will likely have been drugged, abused, beaten into having sex with punters, they will rape other women so carry on, nothing to see here despite all the very many reports we have about the appalling misogynistic culture the police have and the faintest possibility that a culture which allows male police officers to buy sex from abused women might help create and perpetuate that misogynistic culture which everyone says they want to get rid of right up to the point it requires men to stop doing something..... when it all becomes too difficult etc.,. well .......
We're into St Augustine's territory, aren't we. "Lord. Stop me being a misogynist. But not yet."
Police officers can have sex like everyone else - by being nice and charming to the people they'd like to have sex with. Just a thought.
A ban on wearing pantyhose would not be gender neutral, even if it applied to male and female officers alike and in fact caught a very few male officers.
It would be lovely if everyone was lovely, with especial reference to police officers. Unfortunately they aren't, and we have to legislate accordingly. For those to whom sex via being nice and charming is off limits, prostitution is better than rape, never mind rape and murder.
Try and engage with the issue around conflicts of interest.
Prostitution by the way is rape and violence and facilitates drugs and human trafficking and pimping - all of which are criminal offences, which police officers are expected to investigate. It is not better than rape. It is another version of it, another way in which women (often young women) are abused by men.
.
@Cyclefree I am usually sympathetic to your points but this goes way too far. Of course prostitution can be a form of rape if the woman is not truly consenting because she has been trafficked, or is dependent on a drug supply or scared of her pimp.
But prostitution per se is not rape. Many prostitutes enter into transactions freely and because they want money for whatever purpose. You can argue about the morality of that, the desirability or otherwise of using the criminal law to try and discourage that but you cannot say that is rape.
But, given the current somewhat ambiguous state of our current law and the risks of corruption and extortion arising I do agree that serving police officers should not be paying for sex.
Read this thread and then tell me that those women are truly freely consenting to sex. Women who are desperate are not free. They are selling their bodies because they have to. That is not consent freely given in any meaningful sense of the word. We have made coercive control a criminal offence but don't want to consider that pimps managing prostitutes is also a form of coercive control.
Read this thread and then tell me that those women are truly freely consenting to sex. Women who are desperate are not free. They are selling their bodies because they have to. That is not consent freely given in any meaningful sense of the word. We have made coercive control a criminal offence but don't want to consider that pimps managing prostitutes is also a form of coercive control.
It does sometimes feel that the theoretical argument that if someone genuinely chooses to prostitute then it should perhaps be permissable, overlooks the grubby reality of how and why people would 'choose' it in most instances, and that a Hobson's choice is not much of one.
I see that the Met has now banned its officers from paying for sex.
We might pause and ponder why the Met ever thought that permitting this was a good idea, given the number of criminal offences associated with prostitution and the conflicts of interest that would inevitably arise if police officers were also punters.
Still, we must be grateful that somewhere in the Met there is someone with a working brain.
Gosh
That takes some thinking about. Does any other employer do this? Is paying for sex a thing any protected characteristic subgroup does more than average, which would make the rule vulnerable?
I have no idea re other employers.
But the police are in a special position because of their ** coughs politely ** duty to enforce the law (I know, I know but it has to be mentioned). They cannot do their job if they put themselves in a position where they have a conflict of interest or the appearance of one. (See some of the details around Couzens behaviour to understand why, for instance.)
And if police officers think women can be bought and sold it's not hard to see why that might lead to the sort of anti-women behaviour we have seen in far too many officers against their female colleagues and female members of the public and as described in far too many reports.
As for the Equality Act point, the obligation is on a service provider not to discriminate on the grounds of one of the protected characteristics. The police are not a service provider of prostitution services. At least, they are not meant to be. I simply do not see how the EA would bite though a legal case claiming that stopping men who are police officers from using prostitutes is discriminatory would certainly be grimly entertaining.
I am not an Andrew Tate, treat-women-as-objects wannabe, but if men differentially feel the urge to use prostitutes then a job rule against using them potential falls foul of the Equality Act just as a rule against menstruating would. Secondly there's a strong possibility that a prostitute ban turns men in the direction of abuse and rape, because the sort of bloke who is incinvenienced by a prostitute ban is probably not the sort of bloke who thinks Tell you what, I'll enter into a rounded and mature long term relationship of which sex is just one facet.
Unintended consequences.
Where (besides here) has this new police anti-prostitution requirement been announced? I can't see it on the main news sites or in a quick scan of the Met's development plan.
"An often outspoken character with a robust and active Twitter presence, Hall was criticised by the Conservatives in 2021 for arguing that the deadly storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Trump was the equivalent of UK politicians who opposed Brexit."
What happened was that the leadership/CCHQ nixed the good candidates in favour of their 'modernising' candidate, and then he was brought down by groping allegations. Leaving someone (and I am not criticising the lady as I know nothing about her) who was never meant to be the candidate. The current incumbency really is having a good go at being the ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Any idea who? I know Paul Scully was nixed. Passes the "not on-the-record bonkers" test, but a fairly small beast politically. People were talking up Justine Greening, but I don't think she was ever that interested.
Samuel Kasamu (sp?) I think was well-thought of but too Borisy.
Comments
https://twitter.com/ellyarrow/status/1677421940116451328?s=61&t=wWWeJB3W_ksMJK4LA1OvkA
Perhaps worth a try?
https://nitter.net/ellyarrow/status/1677421940116451328
A rather bleak thread, I thought.